I remember the day back in March of 2004 when I first conceived of what an online math competition might be like.

On September 16, 2006, I experienced it.

The first two years of the iTest, while successful by any reasonable measure, were not true to the vision of the project. They were temporary stopgaps - a training-wheels version of the real deal.

After the 2005 test suffered some critical typos and received a fair share of criticism, it was back to the drawing board for me. Those first couple of months were difficult, but they were important...I had to re-commit myself to a project that had suddenly soured.

The long-term vision of the company has been to deliver a suite of educational competitions across a variety of subjects all for free, augmenting the US educational system through competition. A unique approach, but one that got us distracted: toying with expansion prevented us from doing what we should've focused on all along...nailing one subject cold before we expand.

So 2006 was like I was having to re-invent the company all over again. The key was to get "back to basics" - eschew designs on artificial growth and get back to real, organic expansion through word-of-mouth built around a core product. And like any good sports team, after a lackluster season, what do you do? Go out and get yourself some new talent.

Enter Thomas Mildorf, the MIT student with a profound gift for dreaming up math questions, and a highly regarded individual among the national math community. He became the 2006 iTest's heavy hitter overnight. I structured an incentive-based deal for him to write over half of the contest, and he accepted, and that was the first step in the right direction.

Next was fast-forwarding our technological capabilities in accordance with our long-term strategy. Here, I turned to Dave Cowart and Evan to get the job done. Evan handled the upkeep of content on our informational (corporate) page, while Dave built from scratch the software that would later be used to run the 2006 iTest in a way that no academic competition has ever been run EVER. How awesome is that?

Next after that was the step to change our marketing approach to a more practical, slimmed-down version of the 2005 marketing campaign. In 2005, we bombarded schools early on (in April before the September competition) with a massive folder of information that included a mousepad. The mousepad did succeed in getting us eyeballs by teachers and students using it next to their school computers, but it was too high of a cost...and it was eventually outweighed by the fact that teachers simply forgot about the competition come September, even with that mousepad sitting there, since it had been months since receiving the packet and thinking about the event.

This year, we hit schools with a nice oversized postcard with our key messages more clearly communicated than before, and we hit them right before the event. As in just 2-3 weeks before.

The result? Doubling of the number of teams that submitted tests, doubling of the number of schools signed up, and an explosion of the "reach" of the competition from 31,000 students to 55,000 students nationwide.

Those three decisions - upgrading the test, upgrading our technology, and tweaking our marketing - have helped completely redefine the brand, moving the iTest closer to the immovable object that it should become in time.

I took a lot of pride in writing the test for the event. That was probably the hardest thing about the past 12 months was ceding such a chunk of the testwriting - a big ego hit. It hard letting go of something you enjoy doing and take pride in, even when you know its for the best. I was able to write part of the test - still hanging on, at least symbolically, to part of the testwriting process - while turning over the keys to the real meat of it all to a more capable hand.

As we got students registered and logging on to our system in the days leading up to the competition, the excitement and hype surrounding the competition was palpable. And I don't think we disappointed anyone. I invented the idea of the iTest Warmups on the spot, helping us build an early buzz and get more registrants into the system quicker, and then we delivered the main event: the 2006 exam.

Students collaborated on the exam using our software, sharing their answers with their teammates and leaving ideas, thoughts, and directives for each other on the blog on each team's main page. And even better, the blog on the main page enabled students and teachers alike to correspond from all over the country, as if the entirety of the United States were congregated in a massive auditorium somewhere sharing one common experience.

As someone close to academic competitions for most of my life, I understand the sea change this represents, for better or worse: THIS SIMPLY HAS NEVER, EVER BEEN DONE BEFORE.

Now, as I prepare to restructure the company to better prepare us for the repercussions of our turnaround, I get to pause just for a brief moment and say thanks to the people who made this possible.

The iTest is an idea that has come to pass that now has tremendous value to the educational system - precisely where we wanted to go. Now as long as we don't take a step backward in '07, we should be in excellent position to capitalize on our turnaround.